Using a 60 degree triangle ruler

I have seen some lovely triangle quilts popping up lately like this one and this one. I duly sent away for a ruler so I could have a play around. This is a 2"-6" ruler - I decided to try out the biggest size. Initially I wasn't sure what the advantage of having the corners cut off like this was, but felt sure it would be for a good reason!

Sure enough it was! It means the pieces all line up perfectly. In the picture above I haven't matched the edges up so you can see how the shapes fit together.

This is how neatly the pieces go together - I haven't done any trimming at all. I then pinned another little row on - I wasn't too sure what I was trying to line up so I just eyed up the seam lines.

Hey presto! The points matched pretty well with minimal attention on my part. Magic!

I wasn't too sure about pressing the seams. I like to press seams open where possible because I like to minimise that knobbly bit in the middle. But you can see my battle against the knobbly-bit is not entirely won.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how this little experiment unfolded. And doesn't my grotty ironing board provide a lovely backdrop ;-). I see a triangle quilt appearing on my 'to do' list...

Southern Skies quilt finished

Here she is, all done!

I love the colours in this quilt against the grey background. I originally wondered if it might look a bit dark, but I think the lighter stars are doing good work. They look white, but they have a tiny pale grey pattern on them. It's a bit of an eclectic mix of fabrics, including a shot cotton binding and two William Morris prints. I just couldn't resist these little birds:

I started by quilting straight lines down the seams, then wondered what else I could do to liven it up. I didn't want to do lots of dense quilting because the fabric is so soft.  I eventually decided to do some diagonal lines which change directions. You can see the lines better in this picture:

Stars galore!

I finally decided (after much gnashing of teeth) that I would quilt my sparkle punch quilt myself. Initially I thought it really needed a FMQ design and I am strictly straight lines only. In the end it came down to quilt it myself or leave it unquilted in the cupboard... I'm happy to report its all quilted and the straight lines look ok after all. The binding is made and my goal this weekend is to get it stitched on. I really like binding part of making a quilt.

I also finished up another star for my Constellation Quilt earlier in the week. 

I love this one Hadley made, so I adapted the pattern as Hadley has done to get the star-in-star look. Aren't the colours in her quilt gorgeous?

Retro flowers on a break

I have to take a break from my retro flowers for a while - I'm out of white fabric and so is my local shop where I bought this particular white. I'm reluctant to change whites mid project, so the last four flowers will not be appearing for a bit. But I'm chuffed with how they look so far.

What to do in the meantime? Twiddle my fingers? Practice my FMQ? I know! Start a random new quilt on the spur of the moment! I decided to use my Kate Spain Good Fortune charm squares and make a start on Katy's Constellation quilt. Because it seems I can't get enough of stars - and because I just can't decide what to do with my shot cotton bundle.

In other news, I went to a modern quilters meeting last night at The Little Craft Store (thanks Helen for making me feel so welcome). Great fun...and homework! Yay!...That is certainly the way to a teacher's heart! More on the homework later...

Pinwheels

I decided to add a few more pinwheels to my 'experiment' and finish it off as another NICU quilt. It's not exactly as I wanted it to look on account of not wanting to cut into any new fabric, but I think it looks quite cute. I did random straight line quilting again which to my mind looks like wind (because, yes, I have seen the wind!!)

I have also started another project...completely out of the blue...more on that later.
Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Experimenting

I've tried a few ideas over the last couple of months from Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking II. I don't own the book, I borrowed it from the library a while ago. My latest experiment was with a re-cut pinwheel block that I remembered seeing in her book. Without the actual book to refer to, I had to work a few things out along the way. Firstly I had to decide whether I wanted the centre of the pinwheel in the centre of the block:

Then I had to redo my shonky quilt maths so that I was able to cut more economically - the first blocks were way too generous size-wise.

I put a few blocks together. I'm going to pin them up on the wall for a few days and see if I like this idea for a larger project I have in mind.